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Pan across Two Galaxies in a Ghostly Embrace: Arp-Madore 2026-424 | Hubble
This video pans over Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) as observed by the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. This image shows the collision of two galaxies of equal size and was taken on June 19, 2019, in visible light by the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Residing 704 million light-years from Earth, this system is cataloged as Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) in the Arp-Madore “Catalog of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations.”
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and M. Durbin (University of Washington)
Two Galaxies in a Ghostly Embrace: Arp-Madore 2026-424 | Hubble
This image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope captures two galaxies of equal size in a collision that appears to resemble a ghostly face. This observation was made on June 19, 2019, in visible light by the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Residing 704 million light-years from Earth, this system is cataloged as Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) in the Arp-Madore “Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations.”
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and M. Durbin (University of Washington)
NASA’s X-59 Supersonic Aircraft: The Quiet Crew | A Profile of Bryan Watters
In this episode of The Quiet Crew, you will meet civil engineer Bryan Watters and learn about his role on the Quesst mission. Bryan has been supporting the mission by managing the restoration and modernization of hangar 4826—the future home of the X-59 aircraft. He is part of the crew on a mission to transform aviation as NASA and communities in the U.S. work together to verify that the X-59’s quiet, supersonic design can turn a sonic boom into a sonic thump. This new technology, along with a potential change in regulations, will allow airliners to fly faster over land, cutting passenger travel time in half without disturbing people on the ground.
The NASA Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) is an aeronautical research center. Its primary campus is located inside Edwards Air Force Base in California and is considered NASA's premier site for aeronautical research.
U.S. Space Station Crew Answers Naval Test Pilot & Student Questions
Aboard the International Space Station, NASA Expedition 68 Flight Engineers Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio answered pre-recorded questions about life and work on the orbiting laboratory during an in-flight event October 27, 2022, with students attending the United States Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. Both Mann and Cassada are graduates of the school. Mann, Cassada, and Rubio are in the midst of a science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions as part of NASA’s Moon and Mars exploration approach, including lunar missions through NASA’s Artemis program.
Expedition 68 Crew
Station Commander Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos (Russia)
Roscosmos (Russia): Flight Engineers Anna Kikina & Dmitri Petelin
NASA: Flight Engineers Nicole Mann, Frank Rubio & Josh Cassada
JAXA (Japan): Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Panning Across a Made-to-Measure Galaxy: NGC 7038 | Hubble
The spiral arms of the galaxy NGC 7038 wind languidly across this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 7038 lies around 220 million light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Indus. This image portrays an especially rich and detailed view of a spiral galaxy, and exposes a huge number of distant stars and galaxies around it. This is because it is made from a combined 15 hours worth of Hubble time focused on NGC 7038 and collecting light. So much data indicates that this is a valuable target, and indeed, NGC 7038 has been particularly helpful to astronomers measuring distances at vast cosmic scales.
Image Description: An enormous spiral galaxy fills half of the frame, in the center. It is oval-shaped, with four blue spiral arms winding around it. The galaxy’s centre shines brightly with pale yellow light. Thin strands of orange dust are spread around the centre, following the paths of the arms. Above and below the galaxy, very many small stars and galaxies are visible on the black background.
The distances to astronomical objects are determined using an interconnected chain of measurement techniques called the Cosmic Distance Ladder. Each rung in the ladder is calibrated by earlier steps, based on measurements of objects closer to us. This makes the accuracy of distances at the largest scales dependent on how accurately distances to nearby objects can be determined. Hubble inspected NGC 7038 with its Wide Field Camera 3 to calibrate two of the most common distance measurement techniques: type 1A supernovae and Cepheid variables.
One of Hubble's original science goals was to accurately establish distances to night-sky objects, and over its three decades of operation Hubble’s increasingly precise distance measurements have contributed to one of the most intriguing unsolved problems in astronomy. Distance measurements are used to derive a quantity known as the Hubble constant, which captures how fast the Universe is expanding. As astronomer’s measurements of the Hubble constant have become more precise, their value has become increasingly inconsistent with the value of the Hubble Constant derived from observations of the Big Bang’s afterglow. Astronomers have been unable to explain the mismatch between the two values of the Hubble constant, which suggests that a new discovery in cosmology is waiting to be made.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, D. Jones
Space Oddities: Panning across The Galactic Triplet Arp 248 | Hubble
This image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope shows two of the galaxies in the galactic triplet Arp 248—also known as Wild's Triplet—which lies around 200 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. The two large spiral galaxies visible in this image—which flank a smaller, unrelated background spiral galaxy—seem to be connected by a luminous bridge. This elongated stream of stars and interstellar dust is known as a tidal tail, and it was formed by the mutual gravitational attraction of the two foreground galaxies.
Image Description: Two spiral galaxies are viewed almost face-on; they are a mix of pale blue and yellow in color, crossed by strands of dark red dust. They lie in the upper-left and lower-right corners. A long, faint streak of pale blue joins them, extending from an arm of one galaxy and crossing the field diagonally. A small spiral galaxy, orange in color, is visible edge-on, left of the lower galaxy.
This observation comes from a project which delves into two rogues’ galleries of weird and wonderful galaxies: A Catalogue Of Southern Peculiar Galaxies And Associations, compiled by astronomers Halton Arp and Barry Madore, and the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, compiled by Halton Arp. Each collection contains a menagerie of spectacularly peculiar galaxies, including interacting galaxies such as Arp 248, as well as one- or three-armed spiral galaxies, galaxies with shell-like structures, and a variety of other space oddities.
Hubble used its Advanced Camera for Surveys to scour this menagerie of eccentric galaxies in search of promising candidates for future observations with the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and Hubble itself. With such a wealth of astronomical objects to study in the night sky, projects such as this, which guide future observations, are a valuable investment of observing time. As well as the scientific merits of observing these weird and wonderful galaxies, they were also—very unusually—selected as Hubble targets because of their visual appeal to the general public!
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, J. Dalcanton
The Move to the Launch Pad for Artemis I | This Week @NASA
The move to the launch pad for NASA's Artemis I Moon rocket, a visual treat in the sky, and a NASA tech demo hitches a ride to space . . . a few of the stories to tell you about–This Week at NASA!
Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
How is Propellant Loaded into NASA’s SLS Moon Rocket?
Rocket Science in 60 Seconds gives you an inside look at work being done at NASA to explore deep space. Chandler Scheuermann is an engineer at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where he works on the massive core stage for the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.
In this episode, Chandler explains how teams at Kennedy Space Center in Florida load more than 730,000 gallons of super cold propellant into the propellant tanks of NASA’s Moon rocket on launch day. For more information about SLS and how it will launch the Artemis missions to the Moon, visit https://www.nasa.gov/sls
The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis I will be an uncrewed flight test that will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration, and demonstrate NASA's commitment and capability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond. It will travel 280,000 miles from Earth, thousands of miles beyond the Moon over the course of about a three-week mission. Orion will stay in space longer than any ship for astronauts has done without docking to a space station and return home faster and hotter than ever before.
On the Artemis III Mission, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the surface of the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and serving as a steppingstone on the way to Mars.
Cygnus-18 Cargo Spacecraft Docked to Unity module | International Space Station
The Northrop Grumman Cygnus space freighter is pictured in the grip of the Canadarm2 robotic arm as ground controllers remotely installed the cargo craft to the International Space Station's Unity module. The space station was orbiting into a sunset 257 miles above the Indian Ocean off the coast of the African nation of Tanzania.
Cygnus is carrying 8,200 pounds of supplies, hardware, and science experiments.
Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
NASA's Space to Ground: Spacewalk Season | Week of Nov. 11, 2022
NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station. A U.S. cargo craft has been installed on the International Space Station and the Expedition 68 crew members are beginning to unpack several tons of food, fuel, and supplies. Meanwhile, two astronauts and two cosmonauts continue preparing for upcoming spacewalks.
The Cygnus space freighter from Northrop Grumman is open for business after its successful robotic capture and installation to the Unity module’s Earth-facing port on the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2022.
Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
Boeing Starliner Crew Spacesuit Testing: NASA Astronauts Suni, Barry & Mike
NASA astronaut Suni Williams, pilot for Boeing’s Crew Flight Test (CFT), checks her spacesuit and helmet
NASA astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore, Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT) commander, checks his spacesuit and helmet
From left, NASA astronauts Mike Fincke, Suni Williams, and Barry “Butch” Wilmore, Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT) backup spacecraft test pilot, pilot, and commander, respectively
NASA astronaut Suni Williams
From left, NASA astronaut Suni Williams, Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT) pilot, and Mike Fincke, CFT backup spacecraft test pilot
NASA astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore (right), Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT) commander, and Mike Fincke, CFT backup spacecraft test pilot
NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, at right
NASA astronaut Suni Williams
NASA astronaut Suni Williams, pilot for Boeing’s Crew Flight Test (CFT), along with NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore, CFT commander, and Mike Fincke, CFT backup spacecraft test pilot, with assistance from the Boeing team, successfully completed the validation test during which they suited up and tested out the pressurized crew module to ensure seat fit, suit functionality, cabin temperature, audio system, and day of launch operations. Boeing’s CFT is scheduled to launch in April 2023.
Boeing's Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft have been developed and tested to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station from U.S. soil.
Zooming in on The Cone Nebula: 60th Anniversary Image | ESO
This video starts from our location in the galaxy, showing the stellar and dusty band of the Milky Way. Zooming in towards it, we move to the constellation Monoceros (The Unicorn), next to Orion, where the large star-forming region of the NGC 2264 cluster can be found. Within this cluster, we find the pillar-like shape of the Cone Nebula.
The dramatic new view of the nebula shown at the end of the video, showcases its dark and impenetrable cloudy appearance. The image was captured with the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), and was released on the occasion of ESO’s 60th anniversary.
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/L.Calçada, ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: D. De Martin. Music: Azul Cobalto
Happy 60th Anniversary to the European Southern Observatory!
The Cone Nebula is part of a star-forming region of space, NGC 2264, about 2,500 light-years away. Its pillar-like appearance is a perfect example of the shapes that can develop in giant clouds of cold molecular gas and dust, known for creating new stars. This dramatic new view of the nebula was captured with the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), and released on the occasion of ESO’s 60th anniversary.
Image Description: This image shows the Cone Nebula at the center of the picture taking up most of the frame. The shape of the dark nebulous cloud is that of a cone, pointing upwards. At the top and surrounding the cone are bright yellow stars of different sizes, tiny dots and bigger gassy spheres. To the left of the central figure, abstract dusty patterns are fading upwards. The top shines brightly, lit up by luminous stars.
Three Faces of Supernova Explosion over 11 Billion Years Ago | Hubble
Through a “trick” of light-bending gravity, the Hubble Space Telescope captured three different moments in the explosion of a very far-off supernova—all in one snapshot! The progenitor star exploded more than 11 billion years ago, when the Universe was less than a fifth of its current age of 13.8 billion years.
Einstein first predicted this phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, in his theory of general relativity. In this case, the immense gravity of the galaxy cluster Abell 370 acted as a cosmic lens, bending and magnifying the light from the more distant supernova located behind the cluster.
The warping also produced multiple images of the explosion over different time periods that all arrived at Hubble simultaneously. They show the unfolding supernova over the course of a week.
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